DC Metro games: what exists and what to play
Metro Memory DC, the community quiz shelf, and the only daily WMATA guessing game, with the numbers behind the 98 stations.
Washington has a smaller games scene than New York or London, and a system that deserves better: 98 stations, six colour lines, brutalist coffered vaults that look like nothing else in the world. Here is everything I could find that is actually worth playing, including mine, DailyMetro, which you should read about with the appropriate scepticism.
Metro Memory DC: the blank-map test
Metro Memory DC, by Benjamin Tran Dinh, gives you an empty Metro map and asks how many stations you can name from memory. It is part of a family that now spans more than 25 cities and went viral with its London edition in 2023.
WMATA is a good system for this game, because it is small enough to feel achievable and long enough at the ends to defeat you. Most people fill the core, then stall somewhere in Fairfax County (12 stations in the data) and Prince George's (8).
The quiz shelf: Sporcle, JetPunk, PurposeGames
There is no shortage of community-built WMATA quizzes: Sporcle has a whole tag of them, JetPunk has a map-based station quiz, and PurposeGames has a click-the-station version. They are not daily games and they are not polished, but they are the fastest way to drill a specific line before a trip.
DailyMetro DC: one station a day, and a photo mode
As far as I can find, DailyMetro is currently the only daily guess-the-station game built specifically for WMATA. Each day there is one mystery station, and every guess is compared to it across a row of clues: which lines you share, a compass arrow pointing toward the answer, the length of the name, and the jurisdiction, which in this region does real work (the District, Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Montgomery, Prince George's). There is no cap on guesses. Connaisseur mode swaps the easy clues for annual ridership and the origin of the station's name.
Washington is one of only four cities with Photo mode, where you get a real photograph of a station entrance with the name and line bullets blurred out and have to place it: 56 DC entrances are in that set. Which turns out to be a surprisingly fair test here, because the entrance canopies and the brown Metro pylons look near-identical, so you are forced to read the street instead.
The numbers behind the puzzles: 40 of the 98 stations are inside the District itself, 15 serve three or more lines, and L'Enfant Plaza carries five, the most in the system. Metro Center is the busiest in the data, and the quietest are the far ends of the Silver line, Dulles and Wiehle-Reston East. The oldest stations date to the 1976 opening (Farragut North, Fort Totten, Gallery Place), and the newest is Potomac Yard, 2023. The Washington explorer has a page per line and per station.
The comparison
| Game | Format | Daily | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Metro Memory DC | Fill the map from memory | Play any time | A baseline score |
| Sporcle / JetPunk quizzes | Community quizzes | No | Drilling one line |
| DailyMetro DC | Station of the day, with clues | Yes, plus Map and Photo modes | A daily habit |
There is also a longer piece on how the DC edition plays, and a tour of the whole genre by family if you want to see what other cities have built.
FAQ
Is there a Wordle for the DC Metro?
Yes: DailyMetro's Washington edition. One mystery station a day, clues that narrow after every guess, no guess cap, and a shareable result. It is the only WMATA-specific daily guessing game I have been able to find.
What is the best DC Metro game?
Metro Memory DC for a one-off honest score, DailyMetro for a daily habit and the photo mode, and the Sporcle or JetPunk quizzes if you want to drill a single line quickly.
Are these games free?
Yes, all of them, with no account and nothing to install.
Is there an official WMATA game?
No. Everything here is independent work by developers and transit enthusiasts.